youtube.com/themomof6boys

Family dinner is something all parents can relate to. How do I get my kids to eat their food? With the new season of Survivor beginning February 17, we couldn’t help but make a little parody video with a family twist.

We all go through periods of like where we don’t feel as useful as we once did. Perhaps some never feel useful in the first place. I recently got a life lesson about usefulness from the most unexpected place. This life lesson came from a sock.

Hard water deposits. They sit there, stuck to the chrome of your tap and taunt you. No matter how much you clean, that build up makes the tap look dirty and gross. But after a search, I found something that worked to clean our taps, getting rid of the hard water deposits and leaving my sink looking all sparkly.

I have a routine in the morning. For the past year to two years, I have started my mornings by waking up early. I get up between 5:30am-6:00am, while the house is still quiet. The getting up part didn’t start as a routine. My routine started with me waking up and being annoyed with myself for starting this routine in the first place. I was forcing myself to get up an hour earlier than I was accustomed to. I don’t start work until 8:00am and I have no commute. So, why would I make myself get up that early? Even my cats were questioning my motives.Read more

Being home alone sounds great doesn’t it? Are you a mom that is always home alone with the kids and dreams of having time to yourself? I think when we give so much of our energy every day to our family and our home, it gets very draining and we start to dream about the day when we finally get time to ourselves. But what happens when we finally do get to be home alone? Read more

We have twin boys. They are now 3 years old and we are determined to have them potty trained by the time they reach college.

Because there are two needing to be potty trained, we have two potty chairs. We don’t usually get two of everything, but when one has to sit on the potty, the other one isn’t too far behind starting to show signs that he too should be sitting on a potty.

What Are The Signs?

Because I have boys, I watch for the universal sign of the tug/pinch. They will grab at themselves and bother with it until we tell them to sit on the potty. Almost immediately, they’ll empty their little bladders.

Pausing during play time is another sign. They’ll be playing with a toy or chatting with their brothers and then…freeze. They are thinking about what’s about to happen and if you don’t catch them and have them sit on the potty, bad things happen.

A common clue is when they make a quick dash for the stash of diapers. Going in a diaper is familiar and they don’t want wet underwear, wet clothes or to pee on the floor, so the diapers look very appealing.

What Have I Tried?

What seems to be working for them is going diaper/underwear free at first to avoid the extra step of pulling underwear off when they don’t have that much time between recognizing they have to go and peeing.

Regular reminders to the point of being annoying has also been helpful. There are so many other things they would rather be doing, such as playing games with each others that they tune out the potty signal in their brain until it’s too late.

Banning diapers during the day is another helper. They hated that! They though it was a form of kid torture to not be allowed to have a diaper. They’ve gotten used to it though.

Praise, praise and more praise! We’ve done the charts (which didn’t really work for them) and we’ve done rewards. What worked the best was simply the act of marching with them to the bathroom and doing the ceremonial flush of the toilet. They wanted the big celebration and for it to be a big deal! And because there are two of them, there has been a lot of celebrating going on within seconds because each boy must flush what they make.

The Twins’ Favorite?

The most recent potty training experiment I did with the twins seemed to be their favorite. It was a Potty Party. I set them up in the living room with juice, hot chocolate, chips and salsa, nearby potty chairs and all the refills they wanted while they watched a documentary on a turtle in the ocean. They had a blast placing orders for more juice as they watched their show. Soon, the juice started to go through their systems and those potty chairs were looking pretty good. It was a productive day.

Final Random Thoughts

Never give up.

Wait until their ready or you’ll get frustrated and so will the kids.

Find what methods they respond to stick with it for a time.

Keep it exciting, no matter how many buckets of pee you have to dump into the toilet, remember to celebrate it like it was the best pee you have ever seen.

Be creative. You never know what you can come up with, like a potty party, that will make training interesting and fun for kids.

YouTube has introduced it’s new One Channel design. As I write this, it is currently available as an opt in feature. It is my understanding that in April, it will be applied to all channels and everyone will then have the new design. I recently chose to opt in and give this new layout a try.